Are We Moneyballing The Goalies?

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I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to goaltending, likely a byproduct of watching the greatest to ever do it backstop the Devils 70+ times a year for 20 years. Couple that with the the revolving door we have had in the crease the past half decade and, well, I keep my therapist busy. When I wrote about a potential Markstrom trade a few months ago, I really didn’t think it was likely (and if it was, we wouldn’t get any value back), but here we are.

Behind the scenes in all sports the battle between traditional ways of doing things and a new waves of thinking has raged for a century. Often that new wave of thinking is born with the advent of better video, chip tracking technology, and analytic models. Evolution tends to be on a curve as the resistance form the old guard erodes over time. But it does take time. Baseball gradually moved to a consensus 5-man rotation from a 4-man rotation between the 60s and 80s (or maybe 50s, but my point stands), football coaches now go for it more often than not on 4th downs, basketball has become a 3-point competition. Now several baseball teams slap together a committee approach with “openers.”

Hockey is no different and with the introduction of analytics and data having an increasingly louder voice at the table, teams have evolved how they attack and try and score goals, how they defend, how they select players, and how they build rosters, and how they keep those players healthy and optimized. Carolina has looked in 3D spatial relationships to best optimize offensive zone presence. This new way of thinking is finally breaking through after years of resistance by the Hockey Men who largely were in charge. Sunny’s background is well documented and it seems as though he is looking to piggyback on Carolina’s success and re-think how goaltending is approached. I do want to caveat, this is me (a dumb person) trying to figure out what Sunny (a smart person) is doing here and I also wanted to credit JP Gambatese’s goalie blog for inspiring my line of thinking here.

Leaguewide Goaltending​

I’ve use this below chart before, it is the relationship between xGA and GA at 5v5. When I was first playing around with the various axes, I was struck by just how much of a linear correlation there is between the two. Simply put, the better you are in front of your goalie, the better you will be as a team.

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I know, not exactly revolutionary. However, if you look at the standard deviation (.21 per 60 at 5v5) of goals against vs. expected goals against, I found that there are only 4 teams that are more than 1.5 standard deviations from the mean, and only 4 more that are 1.0 standard deviations from the mean on the positive side (meaning they gave up less than expected).

Tim, what are you talking about man? Well basically, the way I interpret this is don’t spend money on goalies unless you have a stud… and there are very few studs in the league these days that consistently deliver year in and year out. The 4 teams that were more than 1.5 std’s from the mean: NYI (Sorokin), BOS (Swayman), COL (Blackwood/Wedgewood lol), and WSH (Thompson). Only Thompson and the Colorado duo were in this grouping in 24-25, and none of them were there in 23-24. As they say: goaltending is voodoo and if you can’t secure a stud, you re-create him in the aggregate, and don’t pay 6 million for a below average, declining goalie.

You don’t have to look any further than recent Stanley Cup Champions Carolina Hurricanes to see how this played itself out. They had a trio of Bussi, Andersen, and Kotchekov – an aging veteran, an up and coming prospect and a guy they claimed off waivers. Now the Bussi add was more out of necessity, as Andersen has been a bit fragile and Kotchekov was hit or miss. They have since let Andersen sign elsewhere and look to be going into he season with the other two as their pair.

I can see the Devils doing something similar over the course of the next two years: easing Daws in with a back up plan.

So How will This Play Out?​

I think there were very few Devils fans that were perfectly comfortable rolling into the season with just Daws and Allen. Allen will give you 25 good games, even if he starts 30 or 40 games, so 50+ was out of the question for him. Daws is a total wildcard and starting 50+ games would’ve been a big gamble. Likewise with Big Save Dave: his sweet spot seems to be 25-30 games. So what does that mean? I think we roll with a 3 headed monster, each clocking in the 25-30 game range.

One thing JP pointed out in his blog is each of these three goalies are actually very good and/or adequate playing 1-2 games in a row. However, once you start to get to 3, they each fall off in their own way. We saw this with both Allen and Daws in the past couple of years.

I’ve said a bunch lately that Nico Daws and Jake Allen can’t handle an 84-game NHL workload. With David Rittich, though, they can.

Why? It’s simple — with an increased workload, each member of the #NJDevils goalie trio struggles more and more: pic.twitter.com/bRRSGmGgex

— JP Gambatese (@jp_gambatese) July 3, 2026

One other thing to note is all three of these goalies are familiar with, and capable of, playing after extended rest and aren’t “volume goalies.” Rittich has experience behind Sorokin, we have seen Daws succeed in near emergency spot starts, and obviously Allen has been good in his workload the past two seasons. If Sunny and Keefe and TBD goalie coach can lay out a plan for all three that revolves around a structured rotation, I can see it working for 25-26. This also provides Daws some cushioning to show whether he can be a guy, or if he is a AAAA goalie for life.

My Thoughts​

Do I have concerns? Of course I do. I’m not exactly a fan of doing a science experiment at the goalie position during a critical season. Goalies have always historically worked in tandems, and one of the reasons Allen wanted out of Montreal was because it was a goalie trio. The other thing this does is remove a skater from the NHL roster and we would only be able to have 13 F and 7 D, and this will require some deft waiver wire work should we get hit with injuries again. That being said, I do like the idea of looking at things differently – and this would certainly be that.

What do you think? Is Sunny cooking up the next evolution in sports, or is the goaltending position too set in stone to work with a 3 man rotation? Is there something in the works that will change this entire calculus?

Let me know!

LGD

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